


Just a Minute

by PhantomFox



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Female Revan - Freeform, Femme Revan, Light Side!Revan, Revan didn't know, Revan has Trauma, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma, mentions of - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22175617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhantomFox/pseuds/PhantomFox
Summary: After escaping the Leviathan, and losing Bastila to Malak, the woman who used to be Revan is rocked to her core by the revelation of her past, and is standing on the edge. Literally.Mission, who has seen that before, helps talk her down, while Big Z does a speech.
Relationships: Female Revan/Bastila Shan
Comments: 3
Kudos: 47





	Just a Minute

**Author's Note:**

> this is not pretty. Revan didn't know about being Revan, and is suicidal, and will have thoughts of suicide. 
> 
> if you are struggling with depression, get help. i deal with it every day, and it's far easier to deal with someone beside you, even if all they can do is lend a shoulder for you to cry on.

“Just gimme a damn minute, Carth!” She finally shouted, turning to glare at the soldier following her. 

The Ebon Hawk had just landed on Kashyyyk, the course that had been programmed into the navicomp just before. Just before the Leviathan. She didn’t even remember what the hell they had come back here for anymore, just that there was solid earth, and fresh air, and nothing that felt of Bastila to stumble upon out there, and Carth was keeping her from it with his stupid insistence on watching her every move.

Gritting her teeth, she managed to continue in a growl, “I need. A minute. Alone. Please.” That last was tacked on to try and convince the idiot that no, she wasn’t backsliding into bad habits, bad habits that she didn’t even fucking remember. “I am leaving this ship, and I will be back. In a minute.”

Glaring right back at her, his face hard and tight with his own fury, he said, “Not alone, you’re not,  _ Revan _ .”

He said the name like a curse, like filth, and she wanted to agree with him.

“Fine!” She snapped, and spun back around to finish leaving the cockpit, hands clenching into fists by her sides as she prowled through the ship. “Zaalbar, Mission, will you come with me so he’ll shut the hell up?”

Mission, who had only recoiled a little at the revelation of who she had been—the young twi’lek had taken it far better than she had, considering the circumstances—looked up from where she and Canderous were currently trying to teach Juhani how to play sabaac at the kitchenette’s foldout table and nodded. “Yeah, sure. Big Z?”

He growled an affirmative as he came back from the cargo hold, and dropped a datapad onto the holotable in the middle of the room; after the situation with Sasha, he had elected himself storekeeper, making sure that foodstuffs were picked up as needed, as well as keeping an eye out for other stowaways. Giving a short, silent nod of thanks to them both, she snagged the first cloak she saw as she all but ran down the ramp and onto the former Czerka landing pad, swinging it around her shoulders and yanking the hood up over her hair. The suspended platform was still being guarded by wookiees from Zaalbar’s village, who growled and barked greetings at her as she went past, and she ducked her head, speeding her pace even more; she didn’t deserve their respect, and wondered briefly how many would agree if they knew the truth.

“Hey, wait up,” Mission called, and she paused, not sure when her breathing had gone shaky. 

It wasn’t from the exertion of running down the gently sloping ramps in the cool darkness—they had just left Tattooine, after going through the Dune Sea on foot, for fuck’s sake, so the ramps were a piece of cake compared to those constantly shifting, burning sands—but she let herself pretend otherwise, just for a moment. Stepping forward to grip the sturdy railing meant to prevent beings from falling over the edge and into the Shadowlands, she waited for the two to catch up to her, unable to remember passing through the first wooden gate and into the edges of Rwookrrorro’s territory.

Around her, the Kashyyyk night had already closed in; the calls of strange beasts echoed softly through darkness beaten back by flaming torches and lights taken from the Czerka stores, wookiees roaring and shouting conversations in their native Shryiiwook in the nearby village, and not the horribly mangled Basic that Chuundar had tried to make them use. If she looked up, she would see nothing but tree limbs and distant greenery, the details lost in the cathedral-like canopy. Under the monolithic trees, anything could be hidden from a casual glance, buried under countless layers of obscuring leaves; seen from the void of space, Kashyyyk was solidly green, with sharply defined shores along blue oceans, giving only the barest hint of the underlying bones of the planet. Just like her.

A very brief thought occurred to her as she stared down into the maze of massive tree limbs and vines, just before Mission came to a panting halt beside her; she had apparently survived being on an exploding capital ship, as well as her mind somehow self-destructing; could she survive the kilometers-long drop to the forest floor, if she slipped under the railing?

Blue fingers suddenly grabbed her wrist, and she darted a startled look up into concerned brown eyes. “How’s about we step away from that edge, huh? It’s a bit high for Zaalbar, you know.”

“ _ You shouldn’t lie to her _ ,” Zaalbar grumbled softly, and she felt a weak grin twitch at her lips. “ _ I was raised here, I’m fine.” _

“Yeah, well, ok, it’s too high for  _ me,” _ Mission corrected easily, still gripping her wrist and looking worried about how close she was standing to the edge of the platform. “Come on, there’s a nice tree over here we can sit on.”

“There’s trees everywhere,” she muttered, pulling away from her and the railing both. Mission’s face relaxed slightly as she did, only to frown when she finished with, “I’m going to the Shadowlands. I wasn’t kidding about wanting to be alone.”

That made the twi’lek glance up at Zaalbar; he shrugged at her, clawed hands moving in a way that she had noticed but never consciously studied. It was obviously a language of sorts that the two had come up with, and theoretically, she would be able to understand it fully by tapping into the force. She refused to, however; at the very edge of her consciousness, something was screaming, had been screaming and thrashing and pleading ever since they had escaped into hyperspace outside of the Leviathan’s interdiction field. Touching the force only made Bast—the screaming worse, clear enough that she could almost understand it.

That was part of the reason she had been so desperate to be alone, away from Juhani’s still wary, respectful gaze and Jolee’s disturbingly easy acceptance of her; HK-47’s morbid sense of humor, and Canderous’ eagerness to continue sharing his war stories with the shell of the person who had beaten his people into submission. At least T3-M4 didn’t give a shit who she was, or who she might have been. Carth, however. She wanted to strangle him. Ever since they had revealed her past to the rest of their rag-tag crew, the only times she had been able to escape him and his openly suspicious comments and stares had been in the ‘fresher, and when she curled into her bunk during the night-cycle, to stare blankly at the wall in front of her until exhaustion dragged her into a reluctant, terror-filled sleep.

She was starting to remember more of what that person had done, even though she desperately wanted to forget everything she had ever learned or heard about Revan, Jedi knight and hero-turned-monster.

She didn’t want to remember what it felt like to casually order the destruction of a entire town or city or continent; what it felt like to watch people burn through the thin slit of a mask, to torture countless Jedi into accepting the dark, to turn entire ships of soldiers against their captains with casual, easy cruelty, simply because it had suited her plans at the time. She didn’t want to know what it felt like to have not Bastila, but Malak, at her side, his darkness overshadowed by her own.

But she did, and she blinked, realizing that she had stepped back up to the railing without noticing. Mission grabbed at her when she looked over the edge again, shaking her by the shoulders and dragging her gaze away from that bottomless drop. 

“Don’t you dare do what I think you’re thinking about doing,” she growled, and she was startled to see fear in her eyes; for someone so young, the twi’lek was hard, toughened by the now-destroyed Taris, and hadn’t been afraid half as often as she probably should have been while on this hellish quest. “I’m not losing anyone else if I can do anything to stop it, especially not to their own stupidity.”

Lips spreading in a grimace of a smile, she returned Mission’s gaze, feeling her heart tremble when her voice came out colder than she had ever thought she could sound. “And what do you think I’m thinking about doing?”

“Jumping,” Mission said sternly, before jerking her into a hug. 

Her eyes are stinging as the smile falls from her face, and it gets worse when a huge, hairy hand gently closes on her shoulder. Zaalbar wasn’t big on casual touch, or speaking when he didn’t want to.

“I can’t,” she finally whispered when she couldn’t stop the tears from falling, bowing her head and pressing her face into Mission’s neck some long moments later. She doesn’t return the twi’lek’s embrace, however much she wants to; she doesn’t deserve it, not for what she has done, forgotten or not, and so her arms stay rigidly by her side as she strangles on her tears. “I. We. We have to stop Malak, and. He still has Bastila. I can’t leave her with him.”

And she couldn’t, wouldn’t, kill herself yet, no matter how much she wanted to just give up, not without trying to save Bastila from Malak and his plans for her. Especially not after they had made so much progress, Bastila finally admitting to having feelings for her, returning the affection she had been showering the young Jedi with since rescuing her—rather uselessly, it had turned out—from the Black Vulkars so long ago.

Bastila’s face from the corridor still haunted her; tight with fear and determination as she shouted at them to run, engaging Malak with no sign of hesitation. Their stupid force bond, the thing that had saved her when she least deserved saving, had let her know when Bastila had fallen in battle against the Sith, her warm presence suddenly still and silent in her head and heart. It had let her know when Bastila had awoken in Malak’s hands, and when her torture had begun. 

That was almost four days ago, now, and the bond had grown muffled and dark the longer the week had crawled on, as she slowly, inexorably, broke. A faint, shared pain, leaking through when bone-deep fatigue forced her eyes to close, had kept her awake just as much as her revulsion at her revealed past, as she struggled to wrap her head around the concept of being Darth Revan, of being responsible for so much pain and death in the galaxy. 

And now that bottomless drop to the distant ground of Kashyyyk was tempting her, just as much as Bastila’s own darkness had tempted the young Jedi, and she wondered abruptly what she had truly been planning to do once she had gotten to the Shadowlands. Or if she would have even made it to the basket, instead having decided to take the quicker way down.

Zaalbar crooned a wordless comfort to her when her hands reach up to clutch at Mission’s vest, all the comfort she would allow herself, before trying to pull away. But a hand curling at the back of her neck, under the concealing hood of her cloak, forces her to stay close, and finish sobbing out her pain against Mission’s neck. 

Sometime later, after her shirt collar has been thoroughly soaked by tears, the twi’lek is still holding her, although they had moved from the edge of the platform to sit in a natural depression in the bark of the tree it was attached to. The living wood was hard under her, but the depression was more than big enough for two slender humanoids to curl into, for her to try and hide away from the truth about herself. It didn’t work near as well as she wanted it to, and so she kept the hood of her cloak up, even after her crying had slowed to occasional tears, and her breathing no longer hitched quite so badly.

“Feel better,” she asked softly, and she glanced up, trying not to sniffle. 

Her brown eyes were still worried, still concerned, but there was no sign of fear from holding Darth Revan, not even a trace of disgust or hatred in her face or force presence. 

“I think so,” she answered in a low, stuffed up mutter. Then she managed to ask, “How. How do you not hate me?”

“Ha. Why would I? Ever since I met you, you’ve been trying to do the right thing,” Mission said firmly, tilting to look her directly in the eye and still not letting her pull away. “You helped people avoid their bounties, saved me and Big Z  _ dozens  _ of times, helped me find my dickhead brother, and now,  _ on top _ of trying to save the galaxy and get rid of Malak, you’re also trying to help Griff not get curbstomped by the Exchange.”

“ _ You helped free Kashyyyk, and my village,”  _ Zaalbar growled next, and she glanced at him; he had settled next to the depression in the bark, and was still eye level with her, even though he was sitting directly on the platform. He had been keeping his hands busy while she cried by retuning his bowcaster; the Sith soldiers hadn’t been too careful with any of their gear after confiscating it, shoving weapons haphazardly into storage lockers and containers across the prison level they had been taken to. “ _ You kept us all from being sold into slavery, and helped me rid my home of Czerka. Even though you may have been Darth Revan at one point, you are no longer Darth, nor Revan, if you don’t want to be.”  _

His firm belief in her shone in the force, and was echoed by Mission, and she ducked her head again. She felt like she still didn’t deserve that belief and trust, and wondered if she ever would, if she would ever get used to hearing her old name without shuddering.

“I think,” she managed after another moment, scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand. “That is the longest speech I have heard you make in a while.”

That made Mission grin at her. “Yeah, he’s not used to speechifying,” she said, switching her grin to Zaalbar when he grumbled at her. “You know it’s true, Big Z.”

“ _ Do you think you’re ready to return to the ship,” _ he asked her, and she shook her head, feeling her breath hitch again.

The bond had gone silent, Bastila either having been given a break from the torture or simply passing out from the pain, and the ringing silence in her head made her want to wail again. 

“Not,” she paused, swallowing. “Not yet.” She tried to pull on a grin of her own, and knew it was just as fragile as she felt. “Besides. We still need to get that tach gland.” The grin crumbled. “Just. Just give me another minute?”

The two nodded, and Zaalbar’s hand covered her knee as she curled back into Mission.

Right now, she just wanted to be a no-body, someone that the galaxy would pass by without taking notice of, someone simply being comforted by beings who didn’t hate her for her past, who somehow still saw her as a friend, and not a monster.

She would go back to saving the galaxy, saving Bastila, and being the broken shell of Darth Revan, soon enough. 

In a minute.

  
  


~ _ fin _

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
